Dave Leander found this bottle with a 1915 message in it buried along Harsens Island last year. / Kathleen Galligan/Detroit Free Press

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Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

Tillie Esper wrote a note in 1915 and put it in a bottle in the St. Clair River. / family photo

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When Janet Baccanari got the early morning call Tuesday from her cousin, she thought he was reporting sad news of a relative’s death.

But Eric Schiebold’s news was quite the opposite. He wanted to tell her about a story in that day’s Free Press that revealed a little-known moment in the life of their departed grandmother, Tillie Esper, when she was just a teen.

Esper was one of two Detroit girls who wrote a message nearly 100 years ago, stuffed it into a bottle, corked it and tossed it into the St. Clair River (where it sank) while enjoying a summer visit to Tashmoo Park on Harsens Island. The bottle was discovered last year by a diver.

“It’s like she came back to life,” Baccanari, 46, of Beverly Hills, said. “It’s exciting stuff.”

Several of Esper’s descendants have come forward after a reading the story about the bottle and the effort by Bernard Licata, president of the Harsens Island St. Clair Flats Historical Society, to find the message writers’ families to help celebrate Tashmoo Days next month on the island. The event will celebrate the days when the famed Tashmoo steamship docked daily at the park in the early 1900s, allowing passengers who boarded in Detroit to enjoy swimming, dancing, amusement rides and other activities on the island at the northern end of Lake St. Clair.

Licata has received more than a dozen e-mails and phone calls from relatives or people wanting to help locate descendants of Esper and Selina Pramstaller, who penciled the message on June 30, 1915, and lived just blocks apart in Detroit. The message, written in neat cursive on a White Star Line deposit ticket, contains the girls’ names and addresses and the note: “Having a good time at Tashmoo.”

Although he hasn’t had much feedback or descendant connections yet about Pramstaller, Licata said he got choked up talking with Schiebold and Baccanari, who plan to attend Tashmoo Days if their schedules permit. Licata said he plans to have a tent with tables reserved for the descendants at the July 20 event.

Schiebold, 59, of Bloomfield Township said Esper had three sons and six daughters, of whom two daughters are alive and living on opposite coasts of the U.S. There are nearly three dozen grandchildren across the country, including Nancy Schaefer, who posted a comment on the online version of the story. Schiebold said he is in the process of contacting relatives about the find.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “A part of me said, ‘There’s the old-school way of doing a text message.’ I thought it was pretty impressive.”

Schiebold said he was surprised the bottle and message stayed intact for nearly 97 years before being found last June by diver Dave Leander. The bottle, which has a new cork, is at Leander’s dive shop in Shelby Township and is expected to be donated to the historical society’s museum on the island.

“What’s surprising is it wasn’t yet completely silted over or dredged or an anchor destroyed it,” Schiebold said. “For that to be around that long and found is really, really incredible.”

He and Baccanari, who said she is the 31st grandchild, said their grandparents had a summer house in Hartland. Neither recalled Esper talking about Tashmoo Park or leaving the message in a bottle.

Baccanari said Esper had a “really rich, interesting life” and that she “got chills” when she read the incredible story of the bottle and the connection to her grandmother.

“It just gave me goose bumps,” she said.

Donald Hemstreet, Esper’s son-in-law who lives with his wife, Barbara, in Washington, said he could picture his mother-in-law writing the note and tossing the bottle.

“I was very surprised. It’s almost like the lost bottle at sea,” he said, adding that his wife — Esper’s youngest child — would be unable to enjoy this bit of history because she has Alzheimer’s.

Baccanari said Esper would come to her childhood home every holiday and often on Sundays. She recalled her as being a nice woman who enjoyed green tea and fish and cooked for the family at the summer house in Hartland.

She said about three months ago she found a note from Esper in a box in her attic that wished her a happy birthday when she turned 8 or 9 years old.

“And then this happened,” Baccanari said. “Everything’s coming back.”

Anyone with information on the descendants is asked to contact Licata at 586-530-7100 or licata@comcast.net.